Arthur Brooks: Happiness Lessons from a Miserable Wretch
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Hedonic treadmill
12 min read
Central to understanding why Brooks remained unhappy despite professional success (tenure, prestigious positions). This psychological phenomenon explains why achievements like tenure didn't produce lasting happiness, directly relevant to his narrative.
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Behavioural genetics
14 min read
Brooks cites twin studies showing 50% of happiness is genetic and traces his pessimism through 14 generations. Understanding behavioral genetics and twin studies provides scientific foundation for his claim that temperament is partly inherited.
What is the secret to happiness? We’d like to believe there’s a silver bullet. That we can snap our fingers and dispel every source of despair, every tragedy, every inexplicably unfair event in the news. That the next app, the next pill, the next book, the next dietary restriction will finally quiet the crisis of meaning lurking beneath the freneticism of modern life.
There is an entire industry built on this promise. And there is an equally strong camp on the other side, insisting that unhappiness is simply the price of being alive in an unfair world.
In reality, of course, the truth is somewhere in between. Happiness is achievable. But it’s not easy.
Enter Arthur Brooks. Arthur is an acclaimed professor, No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of happiness. At a time when so much modern commentary seeks to inflame tensions or compress nuance, Arthur has dedicated his career to studying what truly makes a good life—and how, practically, we can achieve one for ourselves.
Which is why we’re so thrilled to announce that as of today, Arthur is joining The Free Press as a columnist. Every week, he will help us wrestle with life’s greatest moral questions: viral scandals that reveal our values, AI bots that replace romantic relationships, questionable social-media trends, the rise of GLP-1 drugs—and what all of this does to our sense of meaning, purpose, and joy.
Today, we bring you the inaugural installment of his column, which will be published every Monday. Check back on Friday for his weekly newsletter. And don’t forget to sign up here to get both delivered straight to your inbox. From next week, the column will be exclusively for paying subscribers—but if that’s not you, you’re in luck: We have a sale this week, so click here to save 20 percent.
Arthur’s is a voice we need now more than ever. We couldn’t be happier to welcome him aboard. So without further ado, welcome to The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. —The Editors
The day I got tenure should have been one of the happiest of my professional life. It was 2004, and I was a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, one of the finest policy schools in the world. I had busted my pick for years to get that permanent
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